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<blockquote data-quote="The_Gneech" data-source="post: 4529140" data-attributes="member: 6779">By that logic, what do you need rules for combat or casting spells for? I don't see an inherent difference.What are skills and abilities if they aren't knowledge/expertise? Again, I don't see the difference, unless you're saying that the &quot;genre at hand&quot; in D&amp;D is only the business of hacking monsters and avoiding traps.That's one of the great things about a catchall kind of skill like &quot;Knowledge&quot; or &quot;Perform&quot; or what-have-you -- the player has a place to put their &quot;out-of-the-box&quot; ability on the sheet and into the framework of the ruleset.How good of a poet is he? How do you know if he's written the epic of the ages or Manos: The Hand of Fate? If at some point he comes upon a rival poet (which would be a neat scenario, don't you think?), how will you know who &quot;wins&quot; the poetry slam? Diplomacy doesn't make much sense there to me; you could do opposed Wis/Chr checks I guess, but there's not much room for expertise there.Add a simple Perform (______) skill, write poetry in the blank, and suddenly you have rules for it. With a paragraph of &quot;clutter,&quot; you've opened a practically-infinite range of possibilities.Codifying a skill gives you a baseline for comparison. In a world where DC 10 is &quot;easy,&quot; DC 20 is &quot;hard,&quot; and DC 30 is &quot;incredible,&quot; Perform (Poetry) +10 has a very specific meaning. You'd actually know how good a poet your paladin was: in the case of +10, he's better than average and occasionally brilliant.I see that as a completely false choice. For me a &quot;good&quot; character is one I enjoy playing. For some characters, that means kicking butt and taking names, but for others, fighting is what I do when all my other options have failed. Again, what you've said implies that D&amp;D is &quot;Kill monsters and take their treasure.&quot; I prefer it when D&amp;D includes that, but isn't just that.However, as I mentioned above, SWSE got away from the whole issue by making it almost impossible to make an &quot;ineffective&quot; character. Or as I mentioned a little later on, you could have two separate subsystems. You could build the whole thing as an adjunct to the &quot;important&quot; <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm&nbsp; &nbsp; :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /> skills in a single sidebar.-The Gneech <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool&nbsp; &nbsp; :cool:"&nbsp; data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="The_Gneech, post: 4529140, member: 6779"] By that logic, what do you need rules for combat or casting spells for? I don't see an inherent difference. What are skills and abilities if they aren't knowledge/expertise? Again, I don't see the difference, unless you're saying that the "genre at hand" in [i]D&D[/i] is only the business of hacking monsters and avoiding traps. That's one of the great things about a catchall kind of skill like "Knowledge" or "Perform" or what-have-you -- the player has a place to put their "out-of-the-box" ability on the sheet and into the framework of the ruleset. How good of a poet is he? How do you know if he's written the epic of the ages or [i]Manos: The Hand of Fate[/i]? If at some point he comes upon a rival poet (which would be a neat scenario, don't you think?), how will you know who "wins" the poetry slam? Diplomacy doesn't make much sense there to me; you could do opposed Wis/Chr checks I guess, but there's not much room for expertise there. Add a simple Perform (______) skill, write poetry in the blank, and suddenly you have rules for it. With a paragraph of "clutter," you've opened a practically-infinite range of possibilities. Codifying a skill gives you a baseline for comparison. In a world where DC 10 is "easy," DC 20 is "hard," and DC 30 is "incredible," Perform (Poetry) +10 has a very specific meaning. You'd actually know how good a poet your paladin was: in the case of +10, he's better than average and occasionally brilliant. I see that as a completely false choice. For me a "good" character is one I enjoy playing. For some characters, that means kicking butt and taking names, but for others, fighting is what I do when all my other options have failed. Again, what you've said implies that [I]D&D[/I] is "Kill monsters and take their treasure." I prefer it when [i]D&D[/i] [b]includes[/b] that, but isn't [b]just[/b] that. However, as I mentioned above, [i]SWSE[/i] got away from the whole issue by making it almost impossible to make an "ineffective" character. Or as I mentioned a little later on, you could have two separate subsystems. You could build the whole thing as an adjunct to the "important" :hmm: skills in a single sidebar. -The Gneech :cool: [/QUOTE]

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